Stripe has partnered with venture firm Paradigm to develop a Layer 1 blockchain, Tempo, that aims to support stablecoin payments. On Friday Fortune revealed that the startup has attracted $500 million in funding at a $5 billion valuation, citing sources. The round is led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital, with participation from Sequoia, Ribbit Capital and SV Angels. All are existing Stripe investors.
Stripe leaned heavily into stablecoins a year ago with the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge. Since then Stripe has started offering blockchain-based stablecoin accounts in 101 countries. Bridge recently launched its stablecoin issuance platform and has applied for a national trust charter.
The rationale behind Tempo is that the crypto “stack” is designed to optimize trading rather than payments. Hence, Tempo is partnering with a long list of companies to consult on the optimal setup for transferring funds. Since stablecoins are considered important for agentic payments, that includes input from Anthropic and OpenAI and potential retail users such as Shopify and DoorDash. Several other partners are banks or payment providers such as Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, Nubank, Revolut and Visa. Beyond payment optimization, there are clearly other motivations.
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